Machines for cartoning groups of bottles normally comprise a bottle grouping unit, normally located at the input of the cartoning machine.
Known bottle grouping units, such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,667,055, subject the bottles to relatively severe mechanical stress, on account of the groups normally being formed by feeding the bottles, spaced apart, along a given path, arresting one of the bottles, and feeding the rest up against the stationary bottle to form a group which is then removed. Moreover, jostling the incoming bottles against one another and against the stationary bottle in this way obviously imposes a relatively low maximum traveling speed of the bottles.
Limiting the maximum traveling speed of the bottles in turn results in an increase in the time taken to form each group and, consequently, in relatively low productivity.